I didn't write about the Aeropress when I bought it, and I didn't write about it after the first year either. There's a kind of gear review that gets posted three weeks in, when everything still feels exciting and you haven't yet noticed which parts you'll quietly stop using. I wanted to wait past that. Six years and a few thousand cups later seems about right.
It's still the brewer I reach for first on a tired morning. That's the short version.
What still works
The Aeropress is essentially three plastic tubes and a paper filter, and that's most of why it holds up. There are very few decisions to make about the device itself, so the decisions you do make — grind, water, time, ratio — are the ones that change the cup. The variables that matter are exposed; the variables that don't are absent. That's rare in coffee gear.
Repeatability is the other quiet win. Once you've settled on a recipe — mine is 17 g coffee, 230 g water at 88°C, two minutes total — you can hit it without thinking. The grind window is forgiving. The press itself dampens small mistakes in dosing. On a morning where I'm half-asleep and not measuring anything, the cup is still drinkable.
Cleanup takes ten seconds. That's not a small thing. A V60 means a kettle, a scale, a paper filter, a cone, a server, and a sink full of grounds-stained rinse water. The Aeropress means ejecting a puck into the bin and rinsing the rubber seal. I notice this most on the mornings I'm running late, which is roughly every other morning.
What started to bother me
The plastic. After about three years it begins to look tired, and there's no version of "this brewer has aged gracefully" that I can honestly tell you. It still works. It just stops looking like something you'd want on the counter. I've considered the metal alternatives — Fellow, Hario clones — and haven't pulled the trigger, partly because the original is still functional and partly because part of the charm is that it's cheap.
The volume is the other thing. One cup. If two people want coffee, that's two brews back to back, and the second one is always slightly worse because the device is warm and the timing is off. I've stopped using it for guests; I pull out a Chemex when there's more than just me.
And then there's the inverted method, which the internet treats as a feature and I treat as a small admission of defeat. The standard orientation drips. Inverting it means you don't lose any liquid during the steep. Fine — but it's an awkward flip with hot coffee, and I've spilled enough times to develop a respect for gravity. If you're using inverted exclusively, you might want a different brewer.
Who it's for
People who drink coffee alone, who travel, who care about the cup but don't want to spend a Saturday on it. People who want to learn — the Aeropress is a remarkably good teacher because nothing about it lies to you. If your grind is off, you'll taste it. If your water is bad, you'll taste it. If you brewed too hot, you'll taste it.
Not for you if you want pretty gear, or if you brew for more than one person regularly. There's no version of the Aeropress that's elegant. There's no version that scales.
Six years on
The original retails for $40, sometimes less. I've spent more than that on a single bag of beans. In return I've gotten a brewer that has survived two moves, one airport check-in, and somewhere around two thousand cups. The math doesn't really work in any other category of kitchen equipment. The fact that it works here is most of the review.